From 8 -11 February 2016, the first international conference on language policy in multicultural and multilingual settings was held at the University of Mandalay.
The conference was co-sponsored by the University of Melbourne, UNICEF and the Myanmar Ministry of Education.
The main objective of the conference was to examine the role of language policy in multicultural and multilingual settings with a focus on:
- The development of indigenous languages and cultures in diverse, multilingual societies
- The development of social cohesion
- The advancement of economic development and social equity.
MEC sponsored 31 participants from 17 civil society organisations to attend and take part in two panel discussions during the conference.
One discussion was by some the Eastern Burma Community Schooling (EBCS) project partners.
The second discussion by MEC and the Literature and Culture Associations from Rakhine, Shan and Pwo Kayin. You can download their discussion paper here.
A group of Thai-based refugee education stakeholders also attended and shared a policy briefing paper with recommendations for mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) with conference participants, including donors. The briefing paper can be downloaded here.
myanmareducationconsortium.org 